Penn Says His Future Is All About Big Fights

As B.J. Penn readies for the biggest fight of his career, and possibly the biggest fight in MMA history, the Hawaiian born fighter is hard pressed to avoid the questions about his future when it comes to weight class. If Penn is victorious over Georges St. Pierre at UFC 94 on Saturday night he would become the promotion’s first ever simultaneous champion in two separate weight classes.

If he were to hold both the lightweight and welterweight titles, Penn has stated that he plans on defending both.With the addition of weight to go up to 170 and fight at welterweight, could the champion make his way back to 155 with ease and stay healthy doing it regularly?

“I know it can be done.Anything can be done if you want it bad enough,” Penn told MMAWeekly Radio recently about his desire to fight at 170 and 155.”It’s just going to fuel my motivation after this fight, as far as what I wanted to accomplish as an athlete.It would be fighting strictly for financial reasons, after this fight, so I’ve just got to take care of this fight first to see what’s going to happen after.”

With fights down the road against top contenders like Kenny Florian and Thiago Alves, Penn insists it’s not about titles necessarily, but finding the right opponents, and he knows UFC president Dana White will do anything to make the super fights happen.

“It’s really about the particular match-up,” answered Penn when asked if it’s about weight class or just fighting the best regardless of weight.”People like to watch good fights, everybody wants to see the best guys compete.In boxing, like Dana says, a million times it never got to happen.

“No matter what you say about Dana, or anybody says about him, he really does try to put the two best guys together and he has proven it time and time again.If he could get Fedor to fight one of his guys, within whatever his ideas are someone under their contract, he would try to put the best fight together that he could.”

It’s also been brought up numerous times that if Penn is able to defeat St. Pierre, fans around the world could ask for a match-up pitting him against who many regard as the pound-for-pound king, Anderson Silva. White continuously insists that the fight between Penn and Silva would not happen, and the current lightweight champion says it may be harder to make happen than what some people think.

“Honestly, 185’s not even on my mind right now. And it’s like the more you talk to Anderson Silva, the more he’s such a nice guy, the more you don’t want to fight him. He is just the nicest person,” stated Penn.

At the end of the day, he is adamant that his agenda only includes the biggest fights and after his battle with Georges St. Pierre is over, he will re-evaluate where he goes from there.

“It’s all about the big fights. That’s what fighting is about, it’s about big fights,” said Penn.”After this fight is done, I’ve been doing this for 10 years now, with the UFC and K-1 and all that, and I’m just going to have to sit down with my family and sit down with Dana and see after I win this fight, what’s next to accomplish and see what there’s next to do.”